January 29, 2018

Guilt grows out of healthy shame, and healthy shame allows me to acknowledge neediness, experience humility, identify limitations, admit mistakes, weep in sadness, wish for better, and grow in empathy and conscience as a human being.

Here is how healthy shame and guilt connect. I hurt when I fall. You probably hurt when you fall. If I push you to make you fall, I have guilt because I can see and know the experience of what your pain would be like.

We have heard the Golden Rule. We are drawn together through it. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It starts with the recognition that we are created alike.

We are not guilty for having feelings. We have guilt when we do actions or make plans that harm who we are created to be or harm another who is like us. Guilt moves us to seek forgiveness, not for how we are created but for what we have done with how we are created.